Small Rotary Mill/Drill Fixture

[astroracer]

I built this little guy back in the mid-nineties to machine model car wheel centers. It simply clamped up in the cross-slide vise in the drill press and I would rotate it by hand to drill lug nut holes and make spokes in the wheel.

As you can see it has a bit of a patina problem. Taking it apart you can see it is pretty simple. A small 3" chuck (Sherline I believe) a 3/4" dia. spindle threaded for 3/4-16 on one end and a turned block with a bronze bushing pressed into it.

This shows a wheel center I made. It is kind of rough in the lug nut areas and is a reject piece. I made this table to solve the roughness issue. Never had a problem holding the pieces with this.

This was used in the drill press and, now that I have the FrankenMill, I decided to fix it up a bit and do some of the stuff that I couldn't when I didn't have the tools. The first thing I did was mill off a couple of flat spots so it will clamp square and sturdy into the mill vise.

Continued in next post

[astroracer]

The second thing I want to do is replace this clamp screw with a ball set screw for automatic detents.

But first I need to make an adapter spindle so I can fit this 3" chuck to my H/V rotary table.
That's another story.
Mark

[DIYer]

Thanks astroracer! We've added your Rotary Mill Drill Fixture to our Model Making category, as well as to your builder page: astroracer's Homemade Tools. Your receipt:

Rotary Mill Drill Fixture by astroracer

tags: chuck, drilling, fixture